Here Mr. Frost’s opening reference is to the title he had beforehand provided for his Great Issues Course lecture at Dartmouth on May 18, 1953. Midway of this excerpt he alludes whimsically, in an aside, to the college’s Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.
I OUGHT NOT to have given out such a subject. I thought everybody was anxious about the liberal arts but me. I was going to make fun of everybody, but it seems nobody is anxious about ’em. I don’t share this anxiety at all. I believe I must have got the idea from the president of some other college.
But there is something to be said about what may be coming to the liberal arts. I call ’em “the liberal arts,” not just “the arts.”
I can speak to you as just about to become alumni and owners of this college. You’re not owners of it now. You may think you are, but you’ll really be owners when you’re alumni, won’t you? You’ll be electing trustees and regents and all that sort of thing, here and elsewhere maybe in the world.
And you’ll have something to say the rest of your lives—maybe editorially on a paper or maybe reportorially, as slanting the news on some newspaper. But you’ll be having something to say about the shape colleges are going to take.
Sometimes I wonder if the best colleges aren’t going to be the private ones that own themselves, that don’t belong to the government and can say what they want to be without consulting anybody in Washington. But I’m not sure of that. I’m not sure that in a great state university, the little liberal-arts college in the middle of it may not have a cozy place where it can do almost what it pleases, too—stay with the liberal arts and not get businesslike or too scientific or too anything but liberal arts.
Well, anyway, if I don’t worry about the liberal arts, I can at least tell you what they are, can’t I? And to do that, let me first tell you what you might expect me to know more about. Let me first tell you what poetry is.
The first thing that poetry is is both prose and verse. So I won’t get into trouble there, let me say that at once. In the old days, in the old classical days, you’ll find Cicero, though he wrote no verse at all, spoken of as a Roman poet. And I always in speaking of poetry, always mean prose and verse. Well, that’s the first thing.
Let me tell you two or three things poetry is. Another thing is, I like to think, this. I’ve been where I had to talk about what was the nearest of kin to poetry in a college, what department was nearest of kin. Was it the English Department? No, I dismissed that. Was it the Philosophy Department? Was it this department? And then I came all the way down, and I decided that the nearest of kin was the athletic.
For what reason? Because poetry I regard as a kind of prowess, prowess in performance. It’s performance. It isn’t criticism. It isn’t appreciation. It’s performance. (I think the poetesses and the actresses and all the creative people in the world, they marry athletes. I’m always hearing that. Anyway, they ought to!)
I’m not going to linger too long on these details. I’m going to get to the main thing—by and by.
Now, another thing poetry is is to be put this way. I heard a lady speaking, a critic speaking, not so terribly long ago, and I heard her say, in a foreign accent, that the world is old, language is worn out, and there can be no more poetry.
And after she’d said that, I went up to her and I said—(I got up something to say to her.) I said, “I thought poetry was the renewal of language.” (A month or two after, I saw her writing an article to that effect, and she didn’t give me credit at all!) It’s the renewal of words. Good writing is the renewal of language.
And I might just say a word. It’s the way words come in fresh, so that you say of them sometimes: “Well, I never saw that used just that way before. But, on second thought, it’s very nice.” That’s what it is to write. That’s what it is to make poetry, in prose or verse.
Then, another thing poetry is—(And I’m getting up higher with it all the time.) it is the dawning—its got to have in it, anyway—it’s the dawning on you of an idea; the freshness caught of an idea dawning on you.
Now, you must have had that experience. There’s no more delight in the world than to be saying something, in a joke or an idea, just as it’s coming on you; to be with the right people and have it that way.
Poetry has that freshness forever, of having caught the feeling that goes with an idea just as it comes over you.
You know it more familiarly in a joke or in a prank. A prank is like that. What’s the fun of a prank if it’s a studied prank? The mischief that comes over you is at its most delightful just as it comes over you, while you’re up to it.
Now, that belongs to poetry. That’s another thing. And if you never knew what that was, you don’t know what I’m talking about—if you never tasted that experience. And, between you and me, it’s all I hang around poetry for, to have that happen to me—that I’m just right when I’m right where I can catch what’s coming over me, in verse. (Me with verse, not prose; I’m more interested in it that way.)
But I have the same feeling with people, of an evening when four or five things have come over me like mischief, as we talked, you know—all that pleasure, that freshness; the freshness of dawn.
And then the greatest thing of all, I suppose, is that poetry, in prose and verse, is always the free field of metaphor, for those that are good at making it and for those that are good at taking it.
When I say, “I’d like to ‘put it across’ tonight,” I’d be sorry if all you boys weren’t in on that metaphor: “put it across.” I’d be sorry if most girls weren’t. I hope they get taken to baseball games, too, some.
When I say, “I wouldn’t mind, you know, with some people, ‘putting one over on him.”’ You see, that’s different, isn’t it? “Putting it across” and the other’s “put one over on him,” so he got a strike called.
Now, we live—outside and inside of school—we live in the metaphor, the symbol. […]
I’m going to say a little poetry to you tonight, ring in a few of my poems. But let me try one, a strange one to you—ask you to strain a little. Sometimes you have to strain about these things.
Suppose I said to you that a great nation isn’t a progression from another great nation that went before it. There’s no progress to be seen in that. The great nation has a beginning and a middle and an end. And then there’s another great nation has a beginning and a middle and an end. It’s more like the phoenix than anything else.
This isn’t a class and I can’t ask you to raise your hands, but I bet a lot of you aren’t in on that. And I don’t know that you ought to be.
Many a figure, many a metaphor, many a symbol you have to take the context—there has to be some context with—and you can do it. And I’m against its having to need any footnotes. I don’t see any fun to that.
The fun is the free field of metaphor that I’m some good in and you’re some good in. And you don’t have to be let in on it. You don’t have to be taken off and be “brainwashed” about it. (There’s another figure, you see—fresh one, very fresh. It’s not one of my making.)
I’ve written a book of six hundred pages, and it’s all full of metaphors of my making, but I take it you follow—that most people can follow—without any footnotes.
But, now, the phoenix is a bird that doesn’t lay an egg. That’s one thing about it. It begins, lives to a peak, and dies in a fire—in a blaze of fire. And out of the fire rises the next bird, the next phoenix. And there’s only one in the world at a time—just the same as there’s only one great nation in the world at a time. That’s what I’m saying.
The birth of a nation is like that. It rises, you know, big from something else, but not derived in the way of birth—rises out of the ashes.
Now, maybe you’d be amused to struggle with a poem about the phoenix, to show what it is. Let’s see if I can remember that; not mine:
By feathers green, across Casbeen…
Can you do that “Casbeen”? You see, it’s a word a little different from the one you know that by, isn’t it? But it’s an older form of it. Just the same as if I said “Hi.mal’.a.yas” to you, you’d know I meant the “Him.a.lay’.as.” It’s just as easy as that.—
By feathers green, across Casbeen
The travellers tracked the Phoenix flown,
By gems he strew’d in waste and wood,
And jewell’d plumes at random thrown:
Till wandering far, by the moon and star,
They stand beside the fruitful pyre,
Where bursting bright with sanguine light
The impulsive bird forgets his sire.
You see, it all lies to that:
Where bursting bright with sanguine light
The impulsive bird forgets his sire.
It’s a way of speaking. You know, poetry’s always a way of speaking. And can you take it?—
Those ashes shine like ruby wine,
Like bag of Tyrian murex spilt,
The claws, the jowl of the flying fowl
Are with the glorious anguish gilt.
It’s an anguishing affair, you see.—
…with the glorious anguish gilt.
So rare the sight…
Not many have seen it; I never have.—
So rare the sight, so rich the light, Those pilgrim men, on profit bent…
From the Tuck School!—
Those pilgrim men, on profit bent,
Drop hands and eyes and merchandise,
And are with gazing most content.15
You see, I didn’t help you any with that. You did it yourself! Now, I’ll try another one with you.
Suppose I say a poem of mine and tell you how people have made a figure out of it, and then tell you what I make out of it. I can do that, too. Others do it to my poems. I do it to other people’s poems. And I do it to my own—when I have to.
This one goes like this. It’s called “Mending Wall.” This ought to be part of your education. I don’t want it to be so much a part of your education that it’s been staled to you. You see, I always dread that. (Always drawing parallels, you are. Poor Longfellow perished, almost, of being used too much in school. Spare me!)
Well, here’s the poem. […]
[Mr. Frost said his poem “Mending Wall.”]
You may have heard, some of you, that that’s been turned into a poem about nationalism and internationalism. “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall” is the international, you see. They could say that if they want to. And “Good fences make good neighbors” is nationalist. And then I have to defend myself and go ’em one better about it.
You don’t know what I’ll do with it. I say: “Those two are one man talking both ways, man the wall-builder and wall-upsetter, the boundary-maker and the boundary-breaker. You see, it’s two men, but they’re one.” (I got this up afterward, after the fact.)
Then, I say this, that “That’s just what man is, outside himself and inside himself.” While I’m talking to you here, my cell walls are breaking down and making at the same time. That’s what I exist by, cell walls going down and cell walls coming up and forming again, reforming. That’s life. And so I say that life is cellular, both within and without. (Even the communists have cells!)
Well, I say that all to illustrate that part of the thing. Kipling has a poem that goes:
We’re always saying—in every poem we say, every remark we make—we’re saying in a pathetic, pleading way “are you on” do you get it? We don’t cry about it. But that’s what we’re doing.
Take Mr. Einstein, the great scientist. (You see, you think this all just belongs to poetry.) Years ago somebody said for Einstein—(I don’t believe he said it himself.)—there were only twelve people in the world could understand what he was talking about. And since then he’s written several books. He’s come out of his mathematics into just the liberal arts, the poetry of language, to try to tell us what he does mean.
And on his birthday, he gave us two interesting figures of speech, metaphors. He said he wasn’t sure, after all, that he’d got away on the right assumption, in all his thinking. He wasn’t sure—he didn’t know for sure—whether the universe was made of “jelly” or of “sand.” Now, that goes way back to Greek philosophers, those two metaphors: jelly or sand.
Then, he said another one. He said, “Here I’m asked to describe the universe—— (Nobody asked him but himself. But, as a matter of fact, he said that.) “Here I’m asked to describe the universe, and all I’ve got to make it out of is a couple of bones—or as if I’d just been given a couple of bones to describe a megatherium.” Poor man!
But the eagerness, the eagerness we have to understand each other is always coming out in metaphor, symbol—nowhere else. As I like to say once in a while, “I make bold to say” that there’s no such thing as thought—you’ve never had a thought—unless you’ve made a metaphor, an analogy, an allegory. You’ve never had a thought. You’ve had opinions. But what I call “thought” begins with connecting things in metaphor.
I use the word all down the line: “metaphor,” “simile,” “analogy,” “allegory,” “parable.” […]
Now, I’ve said up to this point what poetry is. The best thing of all, it’s this free field of metaphorical action, play, where you disport yourself—for that is thought and that alone is thought; almost alone, almost alone that is thought.
Then, the last thing to say is that poetry—(And this is intended to offend you. I hope it offends a few.)—poetry is the liberal arts. It’s the whole business, poetry in prose and verse.
Let me say one more thing that poetry is. Poetry is that that evaporates from both prose and verse when it’s translated. All this translated stuff around is short of being poetry. It’s lost its poetry in being translated.
You can see what I mean by the liberal arts. In showing you a little about that, suppose I say what is poetry in history. Is it the hundred best books? Ninety of ’em are in translation, so they’re out. There they go; bang! What other, then? […]
Well, we’ve got in our own language English historians and American historians that I hold up at that place. They’re not textbooks enough; they’re not used as textbooks enough. Think of the names. There’s Gibbon; there’s Macaulay; there’s Froude. Come over here, there’s Parkman; there’s Prescott.
You know, there’s enough for a course in history, right there, without going to these darned translations. You’ve got Gibbon forever. I never have Gibbon far away from me.
That’s what I mean. That’s the liberal arts in history.
Little more to say? Let me show you in somebody else’s poetry a couple of things before I leave it. I said that phoenix one to you. I used that phoenix as a symbol of nations rising from nations, leaping from the destruction of nations. That’s my idea of the way nations come; one in the world at a time, practically.
Then, suppose I just let you look at a couple of things. What do you make of this? There’s a poem by a friend of mine that’s called “The Hollow Man.” Get that? (Another figure like that we have. I wonder if he doesn’t mean “stuffed shirt”? You see, that’s another figure. But the hollow man’s all right; another kind of figure.) He has these lines in it. He has the hollow men dancing around a “prickly pear.” (pär—I must pronounce it right. I’m not from St. Louis!) They’re saying:
Here we go round the prickly pear
The prickly pear the prickly pear….
You see, like that. And you get that—desert; “prickly pear”? You see just what he must mean by all that. That’s as easy as rolling off a log.
(You can often get these figures wrong. I used to think “rolling off a log” meant lying on a log and rolling off of it yourself. But it means rolling it off at the skidway. I see that now; matured, I have.)
You want to be left to yourself about ’em and get a chance to think ’em out. You don’t want somebody to tell you. “Don’t tell me,” I always think, you know, when somebody tries to tell me everything. “Don’t tell me; let me alone; mind your own business.”
Here’s one I didn’t puzzle over. I was wrong with it for years. It’s this one. Keats wanted to have it said of him that his name was “writ in water.”17 And, you see, what I had, I had a vision of his name being writ on a pond, written on a pond or on a river or on the ocean or something.
He didn’t mean that. He meant with a pen dipped in water. (The same as you’d say—if I was Hitler or somebody—my name was “writ in blood.”) My name was writ in ink; my name was writ in water. He means his pen dipped in water. (It’d been nice if his name had been dipped in lemon juice, wouldn’t it? Because that would come out later!)
You see, all this fooling is—this is the whole business. I’m throwing ’em around with you.
Then, T. S. Eliot winds up that poem about “Here we go round the prickly pear / The prickly pear…,” he winds it up with this:
This is the way the world ends…
Haven’t you heard it? With his fine voice, he does it beautifully. It’s one of the best things to listen to.—
This is the way the world ends…
He has to say that three times.—
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Two figures there. He prefers the second one, he says. He can be completely wrong about that, you know. I haven’t seen it end yet. And I don’t think it’s ending with a bang. And I’m sure it isn’t ending with a whimper. There are a few people whimpering. They’re another “lost generation,” I suppose. You’ve always got some generation getting lost.
Well, now look, somebody else says that “There is no past, there is no future, all is the present.”18 Now, you can say that like a philistine—(If you know what that figure is. It’s another figure.)—you can say that like a coarse, common fool. There’s only the present and my bread and butter.
No. The liberal arts are for the purpose of giving you a very extensive present; I agree to the present. The question with you when you’re old—you know, and counting your score—the question is, “What has been the extent of my present; how wide and how long, backward and forward?”
You can’t stretch it very far forward. We do our best to stretch it forward, with our dreams and our “ideals,” as we call ’em. But the stretch back is a very important thing. […]
So, the liberal arts are poetry, in my double sense of the word. And that means a very extensive thing. I bring in Einstein. I bring in Egypt. I bring in all I can for breadth and length, in my education. But it all centers in: “Words alone are a certain good”19—some poet says. That’s the liberal arts.
When you get into a graduate school there’s something else. There are specialities coming and all that. That’s just what I leave out. But this is the length and breadth, the extent of your present. You don’t want a stupid, nose-in-the-ground present.
Einstein says the universe is limited and that it’s curved. And then I like to say, for the fun of it: “I know why he thinks the universe is curved. Because all reasoning is in a circle. And all reasoning is in a circle because of the shape of the brain pan.”
That’s my interference with these things. But I’m playing this just the same as he is and the same as you are. I can do it and I can take it. That’s the thing. […]
The whole poetry of poetry is like this. This cultivation is to get people so—a family, we’ll say; when they’re grown up and have a family and everybody’s living together—so when one hints, the others don’t miss the hint. And when one doesn’t hint, nobody takes a hint.
See, get it right. And when nobody’s got a double meaning, to know that nobody has a double meaning. But when a double meaning—where there’s an intimation of something else—to get it.
See, that’s what the liberal arts are. And that’s living every day, all the time. It isn’t just in school. It’s been going on with you for years.
I could string out a lot of baseball ones or football ones and all sorts of business ones. It’s very important to be—all important—to be good at metaphor and intimations and hints and all these things—double entendres, you know.